The Light of All That Falls

I was exited for this book. Way more excited than I had thought I would be until I was downloading it. Books 1 and 2 were brilliant, those unicorns that so many writers strive for but so few manage to achieve: epic fantasy done perfectly. They found that exact balance of pacing, deep lore, and the obligatory ridiculous names that sound like elven sneezes. I knew this was going to be the final instalment, and so I went in expecting good things. I wasn’t disappointed.

The first thing that I need to get out of the way is this: you should only read/listen to these books if you are going to do all three back to back. I, however, did not do this, as I have listened to each shortly after their release. There are a lot of characters in these books, a lot of places with weird and hard to pronounce names, and a hell of a lot of core concepts around the politics, societies, and the magic system that are hard to remember when you haven’t reacquainted yourself with the universe in a couple of years. However, by halfway through the book I was reacquainted enough with all the minutia of this world to understand just about all that was going on, and I am going to write this review and score it as if I had read them all back to back and had that understanding from the beginning. I know that’s cheating a little, but this is my review and I’ll do what I damned well please. This book deserves it.

Now, Islington gets around the issue of a lot to catch up on somewhat by having an extremely helpful recap at the start of the book. Some people might say that this is cheating and that if you can’t explain two books worth of key concepts and information within the narrative itself, then the book is likely overcomplicated. To those people I say go screw yourselves. Great writing should not be constrained by the fact that previous iterations have been painstakingly crafted in their complexity. When epic fantasy has been done well previously, you’d be a fool to risk ruining the latest instalment with excessive exposition. Bring on the recaps I say, especially when they are done this well.

So this book is the dramatic conclusion to the trilogy, where our heroes Davian, Wirr, Asha, and Caeden are forced to fulfil the prophesised fates that we have been glimpsing throughout the previous novels. This sense of inevitability permeates the entire novel, yet at no point am I left bored because I think I know the outcomes. Our characters use the fact that certain future events are inevitable to constantly outwit their adversaries in manners that are both intelligent and often unpredictable, despite us already thinking we know exactly what is going to happen. We also get some outstanding character growth in our main characters and (more importantly for the nerdy little pedant that I am) believable explanations as to how they get so much stronger over what seems to be such short amounts of time. There are no Rocky-style montages of a week’s worth of training resulting in god-like mastery, not when time travel, knowledge transfer, and internalised mental training grounds are available. Additionally, because we know that this the last book in the series, there is a constant threat over every one of the remaining characters. People are going to die in this book, and it leaves you constantly on edge in the best possible way.

Now on to a negative point, which in itself could be construed as a positive. Simply put, why the hell was this only a trilogy! Islington has produced one of the best high fantasy universes I have come across in a long, long time, and yet he has constrained himself to three books. Book 3 itself takes place one years after the dramatic events of Book 2, and in that year a lot of really interesting events have happened. There was easily at least another book’s worth in that year gap alone, let alone all the extra awesomeness that could have been pumped into the series if Islington had stretched it to five, six, or seven books instead of just three. This is an incredibly complex story with deep, rich lore that is all brought together to craft something wonderful, but we only get fleeting glimpses at some aspects which I (and I expect many others) would have loved Islington to explore in more detail.

On top of this, there are a number of great characters from previous books that are either hardly in Book 3 or completely absent, and I am assuming the reason for this is that the book itself was already on the long side just keeping up with the exploits of the main characters. There is one example in particular which, when it happens, you know for a fact that Islington had written an entire other storyline for and then been forced to cut it and just say that it all happened ‘off screen’ in order to keep the word count down. It just seems a waste to me. We could have been looking at another Wheel of Time here, and I genuinely think that Islington has the skill to have pulled it off. I know this has always been billed as a trilogy, but not a one of us reader/listeners would have minded if at the end he simple went, ‘Sorry, guys, but I think this story is going to take a few more novels to tell properly. See you in Book 4.’

This requirement to squeeze everything into three books also creates another issue, which is that there really is a lot of lore and background to remember in order to keep pace. There is a lot of explanation of aspects that are essential, but beyond this a lot of things are mentioned briefly and not given a huge amount of backstory. These things exist, and I can believe very well that they exist within the rules Islington has established for this universe, but if we had been given some more context about them then they would have stuck in my mind a lot easier or it would have made some of the items or abilities seem a little less MacGuffin-esque.

Aside from these minor complaints, I found this book a gratifying and worthy end to the Licanius trilogy. It may not have quite reach my top five fantasy series, but there are a lot of people for whom it will. As I said, this is damned good high fantasy, and that is something to be cherished wherever it is found. I can’t give it five stars because Islington’s style lacks that very specific flare that I require to give a book a perfect score, but that is just a personal preference issue. For a lot of people this will be a five star, and for them it is well deserved.

As for narration, well, it’s Michael Kramer, the OG of epic fantasy narration. This man did Wheel of Time and Stormlight Archive. To me, his voice is the voice of epic fantasy and likely always will be. He simply is the best at what he does.

Personal Score. 4.75 stars

Professional Score: 5 stars